Mossberg Reviews the Jitterbug Touch 2 Smart Phone

9/3/2013 9:00PM

Switching to smart phones can be intimidating for some, particularly senior citizens. As Walt Mossberg shows us, the interface of the Jitterbug Touch can help ease the transition, but flaws in the phone itself defeat the purpose. (Photo: GreatCall)

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

I ... I ... transitioning from me ... with fall into a smartphone ... can be tough ... especially for ... teaching seniors who ... may have up ... less than perfect vision or less than perfect ... I can coronation ... the sun now there's a new Android smartphone ... designed to win the way a simplify ... the process of making the switch ... I this is why prospered from Wall Street Journal in this week I tested ... the cheater bug touch to ... its end all touch Android smartphones ... cost a hundred and forty dollars ... and comes from a company called great call in which specializes in making ... mobile devices and services for seniors ... great call is positioning major bug a ... touch too ... not only for seniors or for anyone who is ... it kind of of of leader Dr a little bit ... uncertain about making ... the transition from ... an older style simple phone to a smartphone ... what they've done is they've taken a standard Android ... smartphone ... and ... it ... overlaid it with ... their own interface ... which looks very different than regular Android or an I phone ... it instead of the pages and screens full of icons ... the German touch too ... has a very simple clean ... up home screen with just two tabs ... of one called up home and one call people ... the home ten is your favorite apps and they are not represented ... by a ... kind of scattered icons but by ... the staff to lists of ... text panels ... of with little illustrative of icons on them ... I've that say what they do ... says phone and says text message ... in big fonts ... nine you can scroll through that list ... similarly the people have been ... has your favorite contacts ... a little picture them if it's available and you can scroll through that ... cap on and and call the person ... I'm ... there some other really nice features ... to the German church too ... including twenty four seven customer support that's quite friendly ... and and an operator who will look things up and ... place calls for you on this is a human ... operator based in the United States not a ... robotic thing ... and ... some acts that they build in that are optional ... which ... we'd be useful and to some senior citizens like ... an emergency response and that costs extra money ... or that we can call a nurse ... with a medical problem but ... there's a big but here ... aam ... in my tests I found the German church too ... to be ... a problematic fall ... again I like the interface and I think that it ... it does what the company wants to do ... the phone itself seem to constantly struggling seemed ... are under Howard ... for instance I had um ... numerous instances where it was very slow going from one end to another or from NM back to the ... home screen ... sometimes I would get a spinning circle for quite awhile other times ... I would just get a blank black or white screen ... ay ay in addition of ... I got crashes of certain apps ... including in one instance even though the ... free call ... our home screen ... and um ... what I try to download a simple solitaire game even though I had added ... almost nothing to the fall ... I am not really it exits storage space ... in any significant way ... I got an error message saying insufficient storage to download this ... and I think those kinds of things ... I ... cut exactly against what Great calls trying to do with this phone ... which is to make it ... easy and give people confidence in using it ... these kinds of behaviors on the phone ... are likely to undercut that ... the company I did not have any specific ... export explanation for the Proms I ran into with the phone ... he did say they were high in the e typical ... and did not what ... it most of its customers would it would find ... but I had to test units one ... much worse than the ... other ... and that that even the better one that worked to find ... some of the time ... exhibit this behavior ... quite ... often ... so I'm a mixed verdict on this Palm the user interfaces is good ... aam but ... unfortunately I think the palm they've chosen ... which is by the way may buy ... Huawei and Chinese phone manufacturer ... is ... it ... is ... not up to ... not up to the job ... this is what my spurred ... Allysia next week ...